The Taxus genome provides insights into paclitaxel biosynthesis

The ancient gymnosperm genus Taxus is the exclusive source of the anticancer drug paclitaxel, yet no reference genome sequences are available for comprehensively elucidating the paclitaxel biosynthesis pathway. We have completed a chromosome-level genome of Taxus chinensis var. mairei with a total length of 10.23 gigabases. Taxus shared an ancestral whole-genome duplication with the coniferophyte lineage and underwent distinct transposon evolution. We discovered a unique physical and functional grouping of CYP725As (cytochrome P450) in the Taxus genome for paclitaxel biosynthesis. We also identified a gene cluster for taxadiene biosynthesis, which was formed mainly by gene duplications. This study will facilitate the elucidation of paclitaxel biosynthesis and unleash the biotechnological potential of Taxus.

The Taxus genome provides insights into paclitaxel biosynthesis

The ancient gymnosperm genus Taxus is the exclusive source of the anticancer drug paclitaxel, yet no reference genome sequences are available for comprehensively elucidating the paclitaxel biosynthesis pathway. We have completed a chromosome-level genome of Taxus chinensis var. mairei with a total length of 10.23 Gb. Taxus shared an ancestral whole-genome duplication with the coniferophyte lineage and underwent distinct transposon evolution. We discovered a unique physical and functional grouping of CYP725As (cytochrome P450) in the Taxus genome for paclitaxel biosynthesis. We also identified a gene cluster in the taxadiene biosynthesis, which was mainly formed by gene duplications. This study will facilitate the elucidation of paclitaxel biosynthesis and unleash the biotechnological potential of Taxus.One Sentence SummaryA chromosome-level genome assembly of Taxus chinensis var. mairei uncovers its unique genome evolution process and genetic architectures for the paclitaxel biosynthesis pathway.

TE-greedy-nester: structure-based detection of LTR retrotransposons and their nesting

Motivation Transposable elements (TEs) in eukaryotes often get inserted into one another, forming sequences that become a complex mixture of full-length elements and their fragments. The reconstruction of full-length elements and the order in which they have been inserted is important for genome and transposon evolution studies. However, the accumulation of mutations and genome rearrangements over evolutionary time makes this process error-prone and decreases the efficiency of software aiming to recover all nested full-length TEs. Results We created software that uses a greedy recursive algorithm to mine increasingly fragmented copies of full-length LTR retrotransposons in assembled genomes and other sequence data. The software called TE-greedy-nester considers not only sequence similarity but also the structure of elements. This new tool was tested on a set of natural and synthetic sequences and its accuracy was compared to similar software. We found TE-greedy-nester to be superior in a number of parameters, namely computation time and full-length TE recovery in highly nested regions. Availability and implementation http://gitlab.fi.muni.cz/lexa/nested. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Characterization of a repetitive element detected by NheI in the genomes of Salmo species

The genomes of the two species in the genus Salmo (Atlantic salmon, S. salar; brown trout, S. trutta) contain a 380-bp repetitive element that is flanked by the recognition sequence of the restriction enzyme NheI. These elements, which comprise approximately 1.2% of the salmon genome, do not exist in long tandem arrays as is typical of satellite DNA. A comparison of the sequences of 16 salmon and 7 trout elements revealed that members of this family of repetitive DNA are closely related to one another (over 95% identity). Subfamily structure exists and there is evidence that members of the same subfamilies are found in both Salmo species. A search of the GenBank database indicated that sequences homologous to the NheI repeat are located within a 1424-bp segment inserted immediately downstream of the 5′ end of a Tc1 transposon-like sequence isolated from Atlantic salmon (A.R. Radice, B. Bugaj, D.H. Fitch, and S.W. Emmons, unpublished data; GenBank accession No. L12206).Key words: satellite DNA, Atlantic salmon, brown trout, Tc1-like transposon, evolution.